This study estimates the causal effects of a public per-student
subsidy program targeted at low-cost private
schools in Pakistan on student enrollment and schooling
inputs. Program entry is ultimately conditional on
achieving a minimum stipulated student pass rate (cutoff)
in a standardized academic test. This mechanism for
treatment assignment allows the application of regression-discontinuity
(RD) methods to estimate program impacts
at the cutoff. Data on two rounds of entry test takers
(phase 3 and phase 4) are used. Modeling the entry
process of phase-4 test takers as a sharp RD design,
the authors find evidence of large positive impacts
on the number of students, teachers, classrooms, and
blackboards. Modeling the entry process of phase-3 test
takers as a partially-fuzzy RD design given treatment
crossovers, they do not find evidence of significant
program impacts on outcomes of interest. The latter
finding is likely due to weak identification arising from a
small jump in the probability of treatment at the cutoff.